Playing catch-up

Normally I’d upload a post bright and early on a Monday, but today…it just wasn’t gonna happen. Unlike most of the bloggers here, I don’t have end-of-school-year burnout excuse. It was just one of those weeks followed by a busy weekend followed by a Monday that came too soon.

People here at the Horn Book are gearing up for the American Library Association conference — either getting ready to go themselves, or stepping up their work because lots of us will take the end of the week off. With so many people out of the office, not to mention most of the folks we work with at publishing houses, it’s the perfect time to take a long weekend away. For me, everything I had to design is done and on it’s way to NV. If you are at ALA, stop by the Horn Book booth and grab our gorgeous new poster by Brian Floca before they run out.

For those of you who are teachers rather than librarians, this ALA conference (in Las Vegas, baby!) is when the Newbery, Caldecott, and Coretta Scott King award acceptance speeches will be given. These are big deals for everyone who attends. People tend to choose their outfits with care and a few librarians have even taken to doing interviews on the “red carpet.” Here’s the 2008 video, a la Project Runway.

We will print the acceptance speeches in our July issue and have been sworn to secrecy about their content until they are given next week on Sunday and Monday. Check this site later this week for profiles of Kate DiCamillo, Brian Floca, Rita Williams-Garcia, and Bryan Collier.

If you want to know how the Horn Book reviewed all of this year’s ALA award winners, go to this page.

We’ll be back on our regular schedule Wednesday — and Friday, too, even though I plan to sleep in that day!

Lolly Robinson is the designer and production manager for The Horn Book, Inc. She has degrees in studio art and children's literature and teaches children's literature at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education. She has served on the Caldecott and Boston Globe-Horn Book Award committees and blogs for Calling Caldecott and Lolly's Classroom on this site.

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